The Bully Politics of Education Reform

America is a bully nation.

America is the embodiment of might-makes-right. When another country (USSR) invades Afghanistan, America is filled with righteous indignation, but when America invades Afghanistan, well, all is right with the world.

America has bred the bully tactic of vigilantism in the sanctified Petri dish of law (Stand Your Ground), and the result is the person with the gun is the law while the victim’s innocence is extinguished along with the person’s life.

To mask the bully culture of the U.S., bullying is confronted as a school-based problem among children (note the distraction of the R rating in the documentary on bullying addressed by Nancy Flanagan and Douglas Storm). Yet, the exact ruling class who denounces bullying among children are themselves bullies.

So there is no surprise that the current education reform movement is characterized by bully politics.

NCTQ: Teaching Teachers a Lesson

In the mid-1800s, public education was called a “’dragon. . .devouring the hope of the country as well as religion. [It dispenses] ‘Socialism, Red Republicanism, Universalism, Infidelity, Deism, Atheism, and Pantheism—anything, everything, except religion and patriotism,’” explains Jacoby (2004, pp. 257-258). Bullying public education, then, has long roots, at least stretching back to the threat of universal public schooling detracting from the Catholic church’s control of education in the nineteenth century.

From there, the bullying of public schools continued, judging the quality of our public schools based on drop-out rates (Get adjusted, 1947). We must recognize that the demonizing of public schools and the condemnation of school quality are the way we talk about and view schools in the U. S. as popular discourse and understanding, but this historical badgering of schools has evolved recently into a more direct and personal attack on teachers.

While it appears we cringe when children bully each other, we have no qualms about inexpert, inexperienced, and self-proclaimed education reformers bullying an entire profession.

While the bullying can be witnessed in the discourse coming from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former-chancellor Michelle Rhee, and billionaire-reformer Bill Gates, one of the most corrosive and powerful dynamics embracing bully politics is the rise of self-appointed think-tank entities claiming to evaluate and rank teacher education programs. A key player in bully politics is the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

NCTQ represents, first, the rise of think tanks and the ability of those think tanks to mask their ideologies while receiving disproportionate and unchallenged support from the media.

Think tanks have adopted the format and pose of scholarship, producing well crafted documents filled with citations and language that frame ideology as “fair and balanced” conclusions drawn from the evidence.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

NCTQ grew out of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Education Leaders Council (ELC), which is associated with the Center for Education Reform, securing in the process unsolicited federal funds (over $9 million under George W. Bush).

In short, NCTQ is not an unbiased and scholarly enterprise to evaluate and reform teacher education. NCTQ is a right-wing, agenda-driven think tank entity determined to marginalize and discredit teacher education in order to promote a wide range of market-based ideologies related specifically to public education.

Further, and powerfully connected to the bully politics of NCTQ, is the association between NCTQ and U.S. News & World Report. In other words, NCTQ lacks educational and scholarly credentials and credibility, but gains its influence and power through direct and indirect endorsements from government, the media, and entrepreneurs (re: Gates foundation and funding).

NCTQ has released one report on student teaching. and a self-proclaimed national review of teacher preparation programs is scheduled for June 2013.

How, then, is this bully politics?

In both reports, NCTQ contacts departments and colleges of education with a simple but blunt request: Cooperate with us or we’ll evaluate you however we can, and publish our report regardless. These requests demand extensive data from the departments and colleges, and then subject these programs to standards and expectations designed by NCTQ completely decontextualized from the departments and colleges being “evaluated” against those standards. In other words, the basis for NCTQ’s evaluations have not been vetted by anyone for being credible. A department or college could very well be rated high or low and that rating mean little since the department or college may or may not consider the criteria of any value.

In fact, the first report by NCTQ has been reviewed (most think tank reports receive tremendous and uncritical coverage without review, and when reviewed, those reviews tend to receive almost no media coverage), confirming that NCTQ produces biased and careless work. Benner’s review concludes, in part:

The NCTQ review of student teaching is based upon the assumption that it is not only possible, but also worthwhile and informative to isolate student teaching from the totality of a teacher preparation program. This notion is in direct conflict with the perspective that effective teacher education programs avoid the isolation of pedagogy and classroom management content, offering such knowledge and skills within a learning environment centered upon a clinical experience.

The sample of programs cannot be characterized as representative based on any statistical standard or recognized sampling technique. The problems include disproportionate samples, artificial restrictions, selection bias toward the weakest programs within universities, lack of clarity regarding sample size, and unsound selection procedures for the sample-within-sample. The problems with data collection include how the ratings were derived, how site visit destinations were selected and how the site visits were used in the data analysis, and how principals were surveyed and/or interviewed.

Limitations in the development and interpretation of the standards, sampling techniques, methodology, and data analysis unfortunately negate any guidance the work could have offered the field and policy makers. However, the fact that this particular review is ill-conceived and poorly executed does not mean that all is well in teacher education. The education of future teachers can be greatly improved by increased selectivity of the students admitted into teacher preparation programs, strengthened clinical experiences woven into the study of teaching and learning, increased demand for teachers to have strong content knowledge and understanding of content-specific instructional strategies, and stricter enforcement of program approval standards.

NCTQ, espcially in its relationship with the media, appears more concerned about creating an appearance of failure within tecaher education than with genuinely addressing in a scholarly way what works, what doesn’t work, and how to reform teacher education.

The bully depends on status—the weight of appointment, designation—and the threat of wielding that power regardless of credibility. The bully depends on repetition and volume of claims over the confirmation of evidence or logic.

The current education reform movement is in the hands of bullies and in the vortex of bully politics. Left unchecked, bullying is incredibly effective for the benefit of the bullies and detrimental to everyone else.

Calling out the bullies, however, is possible and even relatively simple since the bully has nothing genuine to stand on.

In the long run, truth trumps bullying, but truth cannot win in the cloak of silence and inaction.

The States: More Bully Politics of Education Reform

From South Carolina to New Jersey to Wisconsin—and all across the U.S.—universal public education is under assault by the bully politics of education reform.

In my home state of South Carolina, Governor Haley and Superintendent Zais, neither of whom have experience or expertise in education, are seeking to attack unions (although SC is a non-union, right-to-work state), increase education testing through adopting Common Core State Standards (CCSS), deprofessionalize teachers through new accountability and merit-pay schemes, and cripple public schools by endorsing expanded choice initiatives.

Tractenberg details a similar pattern in New Jersey:

Gov. Chris Christie wastes no opportunity to trash Newark’s public schools. His assaults continued recently at a national school choice conference, where he and odd-couple partner Mayor Cory Booker were featured speakers.

Aside from Christie’s well-known penchant for confrontation, there are two big problems with his attacks.

First, he insists on citing “facts” that are either flat-out wrong or cherry-picked to emphasize the worst in Newark’s schools. An education expert recently questioned why those promoting school choice often use the best charter schools to characterize all charter schools and the worst regular public schools to characterize all those schools.

The situation is even more grim in Wisconsin, home of the relentless Governor Walker:

Walker is the archetypical bully. He has plenty of insecurities as a possible suspect in a John Doe case and as a college dropout–which necessitates his attacks on the ‘liberal’ academics. Self-esteem issues explain his need to repeatedly remind us how ‘courageous’ he has been and how he is like Ronald Reagan. Walker, like most bullies, yearns for status—which explains his national speaking tour.  Most blatantly bullying is Walker’s ‘divide and conquer’ management style (openly advertised to one of his billionaire campaign donors).

No group is better skilled at handling bullies, like Walker, than public educators. Teachers have much experience managing bullies in schools. We are trained in anti-bullying tactics. We have intervened in bullying situations and we advise our students on how to counter bullying. It is now time for Wisconsin’s teachers to embrace what we teach our students.

Steve Strieker, then, calls for a response in Wisconsin that every educator should heed: “Public educators must not be bystanders to Walker’s bullying.” Part of the action educators must take is to identify the hypocrisy and lack of credibility coming from the current leaders in the call to reform schools along “no excuses” and corporate ideologies.

Bully Bravado Masks Inexperience, No Expertise, and Hypocrisy

Presidents, Secretaries of Education, Governors, and State Superintendents of Education historically and currently have used their bully pulpits to speak to and directly influence public education in the U.S. and in each state. In the twenty-first century, billionaires, millionaires, athletes, and celebrities have increasingly joined those political leaders by adopting education as their hobby. Among all of these elites, several patterns expose their combined failure to understand the problems facing and solutions needed for education—despite their elitist status that allows them power and prestige in the education debate. Those patterns expose these leaders’ hypocrisy and lack of credibility and include the following:

• Most of these leaders experienced educational advantages unlike the schools they hope to create by dismantling public schools. Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and Mitt Romney, for example, enjoyed the luxury of low student-teacher ratios, but claim class size doesn’t matter (although class size does matter). The hypocrisy of the “no excuses” reformers reveals that these people living in privilege have a different standard for other people’s children.

• Most of these leaders have never taught a day in their lives, and have no background in education other than their appointments and self-proclamations as educators. Sal Khan—like Duncan, Gates, and the governors across the nation—for example, has been anointed “educator” and “innovator” without having ever taught, without holding any degrees in education.

• Most of these leaders have either a weak or nonexistent grasp on the current knowledge and research-base for teaching and learning. Further, like Christie, when these reformers call on evidence, they either cherry-pick, distort, or misrepresent the data. Recently, Superintendent Zais (SC) discounted paying teachers for years of experience or advanced degrees since, as he claimed, those two characteristic do not correlate positively with higher student test scores. But Zais does endorse merit pay, value-added methods of teacher evaluation, charter schools, and vouchers/tuition tax credits—all of which have the same correlation with higher student test scores as his claim about experience and advanced degrees.

With these patterns in mind, educators must consider directly the situation in Wisconsin, where a recall highlights the power of action, and possibly highlights yet again the negative influence of passive educators.

Wisconsin, along with SC and New Jersey, is not just one state in the union, but a very real crucible of democracy. Educators and citizens across the U.S. must not ignore that an attack on public schools, public school teachers, and public school students is an attack on democracy.

Democracy is not just an ideal, it is an act of the individual fully committed to the community.

References

Get adjusted. (1947, December 15). Time.

Jacoby, S. (2004). Freethinkers: A history of American secularism. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Note

Reposting of two separate blogs from 2012—The Bully Politics of Education Reform and The States: More Bully Politics of Education Reform

“Because It Is My Name!” – @ the chalk face

“Because It Is My Name!” – @ the chalk face.

Assembled Pieces Reveal Disturbing Reform Picture

Every time I write about Michelle Rhee, as I noted in a recent post, I feel like I should reenact the shower and wire-brush scene in Silkwood to purge myself of participating in the ceaseless media attention disproportionately afforded Rhee while the voices, daily efforts, and expertise of K-12 practitioners are not just ignored, but marginalized and even demonized.

So it is with a shared reservation (see Jose Vilson’s excellent post) that I once again wade into the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) debate—not to rehash my unequivocal opposition to the CCSS movement, but to offer a brief look at the picture revealed once all the pieces of the corporate/ “no excuses” reform movement puzzle are assembled. First, then, let me identify the primary pieces of that puzzle:

CCSS

National high-stakes tests built on CCSS

Reformed teacher evaluation driven by VAM-based teacher ranking

Teach for America

Charter schools

These various pieces are an effective strategy with a common thread because separately each reform element creates a focal point of debate; for an educator or researcher to challenge any one of these policies is a seemingly endless task since the reform agenda is being set by those with political and financial power. Refuting the need for new standards, much less the flaws with implementing those new standards, immediately positions educators as reactionary and allows the self-appointed reformers to characterize those challenges as being for the status quo and against reform and accountability.

For example, teachers in my home state of South Carolina who have spoken against VAM-style teacher evaluation reform have been publicly labeled by the state superintendent of education, Mick Zais, as trying to avoid being held accountable for their work.

The picture these reform pieces show is not a patchwork of evidence-based and innovative strategies for improving public education, but a carefully unified process of infusing even more deeply the power of high-stakes standardized testing into the fabric of public schools. Look beneath any of the elements listed above and find the allure of new and better tests, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2010) celebrated himself:

“Today is a great day! I have looked forward to this day for a long time–and so have America’s teachers, parents, students, and school leaders. Today is the day that marks the beginning of the development of a new and much-improved generation of assessments for America’s schoolchildren. Today marks the start of Assessments 2.0. And today marks one more milestone, testifying to the transformational change now taking hold in our nation’s schools under the courageous leadership and vision of state and district officials.”

Duncan’s entusiasm doesn’t stop there:

“This new generation of mathematics and English language arts assessments will cover all students in grades three through eight and be used at least once in high school in every state that chooses to use them. In addition, the PARCC consortium will develop optional performance tasks to inform teachers about the development of literacy and mathematics knowledge and skills in kindergarten through second grade.

“I am convinced that this new generation of state assessments will be an absolute game-changer in public education. For the first time, millions of schoolchildren, parents, and teachers will know if students are on-track for colleges and careers–and if they are ready to enter college without the need for remedial instruction. Yet that fundamental shift–re-orienting K-12 education to extend beyond high school graduation to college and career-readiness–will not be the only first here.

“For the first time, many teachers will have the state assessments they have longed for– tests of critical thinking skills and complex student learning that are not just fill-in-the-bubble tests of basic skills but support good teaching in the classroom.”

And what provides the basis upon which Duncan makes these claims?:

“Yet existing assessments are only part of the problem. An assessment system and curriculum can only be as good as the academic standards to which the assessments and curriculum are pegged. We want teachers to teach to standards–if the standards are rigorous, globally competitive, and consistent across states. Unfortunately, in the last decade, numerous states dummied down their academic standards and assessments. In effect, they lied to parents and students. They told students they were proficient and on track to college success, when they were not even close.

“The Common Core standards developed by the states, coupled with the new generation of assessments, will help put an end to the insidious practice of establishing 50 different goalposts for educational success. In the years ahead, a child in Mississippi will be measured against the same standard of success as a child in Massachusetts.”

Even if we account for the sort of soaring rhetoric associated with political discourse, Duncan clearly envisions policy that must include a staggering and unprecedented commitment to testing that rises to the level of parody. But for all stakeholders in public education, the results of all the policies linked to standardized testing must include a brave new world of testing that boggles the mind in terms of the amount of time and funding required to design, field test, implement, and manage pre- and post-tests aligned with CCSS for every single course and teacher year after year after year.

As Yong Zhao has detailed carefully in an exchange with Marc Tucker, commitments to education reform policy linked to CCSS and the high-stakes tests built on these new standards are not anything new, are not justified by any clearly identified problems or needs, and are not consistent with the larger democratic goals of universal public education:

“[L]et me restate my main point: it is impossible, unnecessary, and harmful for a small group of individuals to predetermine and impose upon all students the same set of knowledge and skills and expect all students progress at the same pace (if the students don’t, it is the teachers’ and schools’ fault). I am not against standards per se for good standards can serve as a useful guide. What I am against is Common and Core, that is, the same standards for all students and a few subjects (currently math and English language arts) as the core of all children’s education diet. I might even love the Common Core if they were not common or core.”

Classroom teachers, educational researchers, and educational historians have offered and continue to offer a clear and valid voice that Duncan’s claims and the resulting policies are deeply flawed, but as Brian Jones asks, “If all of this testing is so bad for teaching and learning, why is it spreading?” According to Jones, the answer detailed in the full picture is clear:

“As the tests spread and the consequences associated with them rise, absurdities abound….

“The shift toward using student data to evaluate teachers is part of a larger trend of restructuring public education to align it with the rest of the economy. As one of the last heavily unionized groups of workers in the country, teachers stand in the way of privatization. And to the extent that they are self-governed, self-motivated and enjoy professional autonomy, teachers are a ‘bad’ example for other workers.

“Even though it may not make for great teaching or genuine learning, high-stakes standardized testing is spreading because it is the perfect tool for controlling and disciplining teachers–and for training the next generation to internalize the priorities of the system.

“The attempt to quantify and track every aspect of an employee’s ‘performance’ is not new.”

Standardized testing—the inevitable consequence of commitments to CCSS, reformed teacher evaluation, and each piece of the corporate reform puzzle—combines the veneer of objectivity with the power of perpetual control over schools, teachers, and students, what Foucault characterized as “…entering the age of infinite examination and of compulsory objectification” (p. 200):

“The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible….

“[T]he art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at expiation, nor precisely at repression….It differentiates individuals from one another, in terms of the following overall rule: that the rule be made to function as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected, or as an optimum toward which one must move. It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchizes in terms of value the abilities, the level, the ‘nature’ of individuals….The perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institution compares, differentiates, hierachizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes….

“The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of normalizing judgment. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish….

““In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is the fact of their being constantly seen…that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection. And the examination is the technique by which power…holds them in a mechanism of objectification.” (pp. 177, 170, 197, 199)

Now, in the context of whether or not the U.S. is committed to universal public education as a central element of a commitment to democracy and individual liberty, and then whether or not education reform is seeking that foundational goal, time has come to set aside the puzzle-piece-by-puzzle-piece dismantling of the corporate reform agenda and confront directly the central flaw with the picture itself, as Jones acknowledges:

“The solution to this dilemma is not to develop better tests, but to tear down the whole enterprise of high-stakes standardized assessment and replace it with authentic assessments that are organic to the process of real teaching and learning.

“In sum, the attempt to quantify learning and teaching in a standardized manner is extremely expensive; takes up weeks and, in some places, months of time in school; narrows the curriculum; undermines the intrinsic joy of learning; and leads to a culture of corruption and cheating. As a measure of student learning, standardized tests are an extremely limited instrument. As a measure of teacher effectiveness, they are even more flawed.”

Measuring, labeling, ranking, and then sorting students, teachers, and schools is an anti-democratic process, a dehumanizing process, and a mechanism for control. At the center of this process being antithetical to both our democracy and our faith in education is the fundamental flaw of high-stakes standardized testing.

Do many of the puzzle pieces of the corporate reform puzzle misuse standardized tests and the data drawn from those tests? Yes.

But we must not fall prey to the simplistic claim that the problem is how tests are used and not the tests themselves.

The ugly full picture of corporate reform shows that the problem is testing. Period.

Et tu, Liberal Media?

The erosion of support for the Commons is most distinct in the failure of foundational support for universal public education in favor of the more powerful interests of corporate America. Just as public schools and teachers have no political party, the so-called liberal media have also abandoned public education and America’s workers, teachers.

Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert have fallen into the corporate education reform trap by buying into and thus selling the “bad” teacher myth, the charter school scam, the Michelle Rhee self-promotion tour, and the Teach for America masquerade. NBC and MSNBC, along with CNN, have long been marginalized by the Right as shining examples of the liberal media, but all have fallen in line with the corporate education reform agenda through programming such as Education Nation—corporate reform propaganda pretending to be investigative media.

This week, PBS (certainly the gold-standard of liberal media, if we believe public perception) ran an episode of Frontline examining once again Michelle Rhee: “The Education of Michelle Rhee.”

Teachers, scholars, and education activists—including education historian Diane Ravitch—held onto the slimmest glimmer of hope that the unmasking of Rhee would finally come in the form of genuinely democratic media, free of corporate agendas.

However, the program with the tagline “FRONTLINE examines the legacy of one of America’s most admired & reviled school reformers” left educators and public school advocates saying, “Et tu, liberal media?”

On balance, PBS provided Rhee yet more media coverage, satisfying her self-promotion, but leaving a tremendous vacuum of things unsaid as well as truly accurate and confrontational responses to Rhee on the cutting room floor.

John Merrow and American journalism have once again failed the democratic purposes of public media and the promise of universal public education.

Merrow, however, has chosen to run a much more detailed and enlightening piece online, in writing, about Adelle Cothorne, leading many to wonder: Why offer the larger and more powerful TV audience Rhee propaganda-lite and bury something closer to Rhee confrontation in an online blog?

The answer is ugly.

The Commons in the form of journalism and education have been consumed by the consumer culture that feeds the Corporate Greed pooling America’s resources in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Public education, its students, and its teachers have no political party and have no media to fight for the truths that must be revealed if democracy, and not corporate interests, is our goal.

Revisiting Legend of the Fall Series

With the seemingly never-ending media attention paid to Michelle Rhee, I want to share my Legend of the Fall series first posted at Daily Censored during late 2010 and early 2011 (posts confront Rhee [see Parts II and III], Bill Gates, and Geoffrey Canada’s roles in corporate/”no excuses” reform). I regret that much of this remains relevant:

Legend of the Fall

Part I

Thomas, P. L. (2010, October 19). Legend of the fall: Snapshots of what’s wrong in the education debate. The Daily Censored.

Part II

—–. (2010, December 2). The education celebrity tour: Legend of the fall, pt. II. The Daily Censored.

Part III

—–. (2010, December 17). Fire teachers, reappoint Rhee: Legend of the fall, pt. III. The Daily Censored.

Part IV

—–. (2010, December 28). Wrong questions = wrong answers: Legends of the fall, pt. IV. The Daily Censored. 

Part V

—–. (2011, January 10). Supermen or kryptonite?—Legend of the fall, pt. V. The Daily Censored. 

Part VI

—–. (2011, February 27). Celebrity “common sense” reform for education–Legend of the fall pt. VI. The Daily Censored.

Part VII

—–. (2011, May 14). Maher’s “Real Time” education debate failure redux: Legend of the Fall, pt. VII. The Daily Censored.

Self-Serving v. Service: Teaching in a Celebrity Culture

I taught high school English for eighteen years in rural upstate South Carolina, and two students remain with me.

One student on his year-end final exam his junior year proceeded to ignore the exam and write a profanity-laced criticism of me and my course. He turned it in and calmly returned to his seat to wait out the exam period. Once I realized what he had written, I asked him to step across the hall with me where I asked him for an explanation. His anger soon rose up in his throat and he began to cry as he explained how he had felt ignored and unfairly criticized to the point that he gave up during the year.

I told him I wished he had come to me earlier with those feelings, but also said I was sorry. I then met with my principal and arranged for that student to have a little more time to make up some work so he could pass that year. Instead of failing junior English, he was able to enter his senior year, where he joined my soccer team, graduated, and eventually entered college.

Another student in his junior year essentially skirted by all year, barely completing work and rarely fully engaging in class. While we were studying Thoreau, however, he approached me and asked if I could let him borrow a full copy of “Civil Disobedience,” which I did. At the end of the year, despite his grades falling below passing, I awarded him a D and asked if he would enroll in my Advanced Placement Literature course his senior year. After some negotiation with the principal, he was allowed in AP once his parents acknowledged they understood the risk based on his grade in junior English.

This student earned a B in AP Literature, graduated high school, completed college, and eventually earned a Masters in Philosophy.

I think of these students and many, many moments like these every time I see Michelle Rhee.

With each of the above situations, I did not put on a suit and hold a press conference. Despite being a writer and writing numerous books, I have yet to pen a volume with a picture of me on the front cataloguing my success with students.

With the most recent and renewed flurry of Rhee media blitzes, I feel compelled to note that Rhee’s pursuit of her own celebrity is a disturbing example of the plight of teaching in a celebrity culture.

Self-Serving v. Service: Teaching in a Celebrity Culture

Rhee’s Students First has released an evaluation of states’ education policies. With each media report, a photo of Rhee is sure to grace the article. Concurrent with the release is news of yet another book by Rhee, her stern pose on the cover of course, and a Frontline special on Rhee with the tagline: “FRONTLINE examines the legacy of one of America’s most admired & reviled school reformers.”

The great irony is that Rhee is self-serving, tracing back to her Teach for America roots, and there is no such thing as bad publicity for a self-promoter. The Frontline tagline is a great example of framing Rhee as both credible (“most admired”) and challenged—although no one ever makes a clear case of just who supports Rhee other than Rhee and the people paid by Rhee and the organizations and people who benefit from Rhee’s celebrity (absent that list, I believe the number of people who “admire” Rhee is relatively close to zero).

Other than Rhee’s new book of self-promotion, the SF grading of education quality accomplishes not proving an accurate analysis of education in the U.S. but solid evidence that Rhee and everything Rhee is about “self.” The SF report measures state education policies against SF agenda points. How much more self-serving can an organization be? (In fact, this is the ideological think tank playbook designed to mask agenda-driven policy as credible scholarship.)

SF’s ranking is so ridiculous, the list of challenges are nearly impossible to catalog: Ravitch and Jersey Jazzman provide a good start.

The corporate reform hucksters and self-promoters like Rhee envision a world where self rules, where life is a competition, and where incentives produce outcomes. This world believes in merit pay and measurement because those things have feed their own over-sized egos.

But teachers are primarily about service, not self-serving.

We don’t want merit pay, and we don’t want to fight among ourselves or with others for the essentials of life.

For teachers, the idealized vision of the Invisible Hand ignores the very real world where children cannot wait on the whims of the market.

The bad news is, in the U.S. self-promoters tend to win because they are the ones creating the battles.

And with this blog of mine, Rhee has won again since I have used her name and indirectly promoted her work.

I regret that deeply, just as I regret her newest move to claim a word I hold dear, “radical.”